Of the display typefaces Rudolf Koch designed, Neuland may have received the most use abroad. But how was it made? A 1922 letter Koch sent to Ernst Kellner provides more questions than answers, and designers have speculated for almost half a century about whether Koch really cut its punches without any preparation.

Dan Reynolds’s essay reviews these textual sources, comparing them with surviving process material preserved in the Klingspor Museum and elsewhere. Written by Dan Reynolds and edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series. Typeset with Instant, Almost Roman Italic and Koch Grotesk 16 Tertia Minuskel – a revival of a never-released Neuland subfamily consisting of a lowercase with matching uppercase characters, shown on a Klingspor proof dated 1929.

From metal type to phototypesetting, from the typewriter to the Minitel, and from engraving to dry-transfer lettering, the typographical work of Ange Degheest (1928-2009) testifies of the numerous technical changes the printing and telecommunication sectors went through during the second half of the twentieth century. Ange Degheest’s story is remarkable and a perfect illustration of the technical odyssey that took place throughout the twentieth century. Yet it is astonishing and disturbing to realise that, in spite of the quality and diversity of her lettering and type design work, her name has been forgotten amongst the list of those who have shaped the history of typography to this day.

Reviving Ange Degheest was collectively written in Benjamin Gomez's type design class at EESAB Rennes by Eugénie Bidaut, Oriane Charvieux, Anaïs Déal, Luna Delabre, Camille Depalle, Mandy Elbé, Justine Herbel and May Jolivet. Afterword ‘Ange Degheest, a female ghost of France’s type history’ by Alice Savoie. Edited by Alice Savoie and Jérôme Knebusch in the Poem Pamphlet series.

The digitized typefaces of Ange Degheest are available as free Open Source types at Velvetyne Type Foundry.

Gotico-Antiqua, proto-roman, hybrid, 15th-century types between gothic and roman. Conference papers & exhibition catalogue. Edited and designed by Jérôme Knebusch. Co-publication Poem & Atelier National de Recherche Typographique [ANRT].

The bilingual publication (English and French) brings together researchers from the fields of typography, palaeography and incunabula studies, with a particular focus on type and letterforms. The relatively understudied period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extends from the earliest traces of ‘humanistic’ tendencies to ‘pure’ roman type, including many cases of uncertain or experimental design, voluntary hybridisation and proto- or archaic roman. In 1459 in Mainz, Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer printed the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum by Guillaume Durand, using a typeface (now known as ‘Durandus’) that looked like no other before. From that point, we can follow a wide variety of developments, partly related to the travels of early printers from the Rhine area to Italy and France. By extension, the private press movement initiated by William Morris and Emery Walker at the end of the nineteenth century in England, revived some of those typefaces before they were once more largely forgotten.

Essays by Olivier Deloignon, Riccardo Olocco, Martina Meier, Nikolaus Weichselbaumer & Mathias Seuret, Dan Reynolds, Christopher Burke, Ferdinand Ulrich, Rafael Ribas & Alexis Faudot, Jérôme Knebusch. Foreword by Christelle Kirchstetter and Thomas Huot-Marchand.

The primary fonts used for typesetting the book are Almost Roman and Almost Gothic. Almost is complemented by Adobe Jenson, Alte Schwabacher, DTL Flamande, Jenson Rotunda (not pictured here). The book additionally showcases all 16 digital fonts (15 typefaces and one set of initials) made as part of ANRT’s Gotico-Antiqua project, produced by Rafael Ribas and Alexis Faudot and released in 2019 under the SIL Open Font License. Finally, the book has images of many other related typefaces which are discussed in the essays. These include Unger-Fraktur, Centralschrift, Morris Troy, ITC Golden Type, or Fanfare, to name but a few.

More information on the website of Poem editions

Spread with glyph sets of the 15 digital Gotico-Antiqua revivals. Not shown here are the Zainer Initials.

Louis Hoell and the making of the Eckmannschrift by Dan Reynolds

Louis Hoell cut the punches for the only published typeface Otto Eckmann ever designed. The story of the Eckmannschrift’s creation has often been told. In retrospect, it was the release that made Karl Klingspor’s reputation as a typefoundry director of note. Yet instead of looking at the Eckmannschrift from Klingspor or Eckmann’s point of view, Dan Reynolds’s essay directs its focus to what Hoell’s design contributions to the project might have been. With rare and unpublished material from the Klingspor archives in Offenbach am Main. Edited by Alice Savoie & Jérôme Knebusch as fourth in the Poem Pamphlet series.

Typeset in Instant and an unreleased italic version of Almost Roman. More info at poem-editions.com and the author's website.

Erhard Ratdolt's Index characterum, the earliest known type specimen by Riccardo Olocco.

Erhard Ratdolt was one of the most successful and acclaimed printers of the 15th century. He was also a pioneer of new techniques and in 1486 he printed the earliest known type specimen. In this essay Riccardo Olocco analyses the only surviving copy of this single sheet with a discussion on the circumstances of its production and descriptions and identifications of the roman and rotunda types according to existing bibliographical references. The pamphlet is accompanied by a facsimile of the original type specimen.

Typeset in Instant and an unreleased italic version of Almost Roman. More info at poem-editions.com.

Visual identity for Zaunkönig Appartements in Baden-Baden using Almost Roman as main typeface. The capital N is taken from Almost Gothic, and the O from the Almost initials series, illustrating the bird’s nest (a “Zaunkönig” is a bird wren). “Appartements” is typeset in DTL Fleischmann Italic, the smalll texts are in Bureau Grot.

The illustrations are taken from anonymous 19th-century engravings. The enamel plate was produced by Mikolajczak in Grudziądz. Find more information on the Zaunkönig website.

It is usually believed that the typefounder Robert Thorne (1753–1820) was the first to have introduced in the early 19th century the ‘fat face’, a swollen offspring of the new ‘modern’ types then in vogue. Sébastien Morlighem’s essay intends to reassess his precise role in its development as well as those of other English founders. It is built on a re-reading of several key texts and a careful survey of original specimen books from the Thorne, Caslon & Catherwood, Fry & Steele, and Figgins foundries.

Designed by Jérôme Knebusch typeset in Instant, with Almost Roman used for italics. A cross-page quote is set in If. If was released at the same occasion, designed by Constantin Pfeiffer & Jérôme Knebusch. Second of the Poem Pamphlet series co-edited with Alice Savoie.

More info at poem-editions.com.

Unpublished flower, Kratzdistel [thistle].

Rudolf Koch started to draw wild flowers in 1922. He explains that he “collected [flowers] at random and without any particular aim. I sketched only the ones which grew in and around Offenbach … This collection is intended to give people a taste of summer while it is winter.” One member of Koch’s Werkstatt, the young Fritz Kredel, engraved most of the 250 drawings. The flowers were printed from woodcuts and entirely hand coloured. The remarkable edition of Das Blumenbuch [The Flower Book] was published several times between 1929 and 1942, from small pocket book editions to precious volumes and portfolios, involving many collaborators, printers, and publishers like Mainzer Presse, Ernst-Ludwig-Presse in Darmstadt, and Insel-Verlag, Leipzig.

About the Blumenbuch, an essay by Jérôme Knebusch, compiles a detailed chronology of the different editions and presents rare and unpublished material from the archives of the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach. It is the first of the Poem Pamphlet series co-edited with Alice Savoie.

Designed by the author and typeset in Instant, Almost (unreleased italic), and Jessen “Cicero”, the 12pt version Koch cut for the Blumenbuch. Digital revival by Alexis Faudot & Rafael Ribas, after a workshop at ESAD •Valence in 2016 (freely available from ANRT’s GitHub).

More info at poem-editions.com.

Rudolf Koch’s letter to Ernst Kellner, 1933. Typeset in Jessen.

Waldkerbel [woodchervil], Rudolf Koch’s original drawing, undated.

Waldkerbel [woodchervil], woodblock by Fritz Kredel.

Typeset in Instant Heavy and Almost italic (unreleased).

Typeset in Instant Heavy and Almost Italic (unreleased).

Title plate of the limited portfolio edition. Calligraphy by Berthold Wolpe. Cut in wood by Fritz Kredel.

Fritz Kredel’s signature at the back of a woodblock.

The two-day symposium and the exhibition Gotico-Antiqua, Proto-Roman, Hybrid. 15th century types between gothic and roman was curated by Jérôme Knebusch and held at Atelier national de recherche typographique (ANRT) in Nancy, in April-May 2019.

The typeface Almost, designed by Jérôme Knebusch and published by Poem, was used at this occasion for the first time. It comes in a Roman and a Gothic style, in five weights. Using the OpenType menu, alternate glyph sets can be activated. Every font contains the same glyph set. You can take either a roman departure, and get step by step towards the gothic side. Or the other way around. Above, a full set of Initials and Uncialesque and Bizarre (Byzantine) alternates allow an almost infinite variation and hybridisation of gothic and roman letterforms.

Below, a conference video shows a lecture on the design process of Almost (in French). And below the video, some historical context, from the exhibition.

On 3 October 1458 King Charles VII sent Nicolas Jenson, “a brave boy and one of the good engravers”, from the Monnaie Royale to Mainz to spy on the German invention. Exactly one year later, Fust & Schöffer published the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, a book set with a typeface that looked like no other before. Until then, letterforms followed the Textura, Bastarda and Rotunda styles, or “gothic” for Alberti, who used this term for the first time in Della pittura in 1435 – also known as the “maniera tedesca”, a barbaric art form from the North of the Alps. As early as 1366 Petrarch had expressed, in a letter to Boccaccio, his desire for “a clear and restrained letter, no longer tiring for the eye”. As Humanists were chasing surviving texts from the Antiquity all over Europe, they copied them in their ‘humanistic’ writing, thus rediscovering roman capitals and carolingian minuscules.

When, in 1460, German printers searched for new places to settle and new texts to print, the wish for new typographic forms was in the air. The ‘Durandus’ type marked the beginning of an Italian ‘fashion’, which found its accomplishment in 1470 when Nicolas Jenson re-appeared in Venice with a remarkable roman type. It immediately became a model for printers, a kind of typographic archetype that we still read and use, almost exclusively, today. But roman types did not precipitate the death of gothic forms, and the two co-existed for some time. Thus gothic types remained the preferred choice for religious, theologic, law and vernacular texts. Roman letterforms were the ideal choice for classic literature and antique philosophy, and gained popularity for scientific works seeking light and clarity.

Between these two stylistic extremes, a wide variety of type developments took place during two decades, which were driven in part by the travels of early printers from the Rhine area to Italy and France. This transitory period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extended from the earliest traces of ‘humanistic’ tendencies to ‘pure’ roman, and encompassed many cases of uncertain or experimental designs, voluntary hybridisations and proto- or archaic roman fonts.

More information on poem-editions.com, and on the conference website.
All conference talks were recorded and can be found at Vimeo.

Visual Identity for the international festival of typeface design "Let's type" in Metz, France at the school of ESAL, école supérieure d'art de Lorraine: poster, website, animation, bags and social network using Margarita (Alejandro Lo Celso, PampaType) and Messine designed by the students of ESAL.

Branding communication by Bernard Gissinger, with the help of Jérôme Knebusch.

Là où les details se cachent (French for “Where details are hiding”) is a bilingual pamphlet for an exhibition by Sébastien Gouju at Institut français Stuttgart designed by Jérôme Knebusch. The title of the exhibition is program for the pamphlet as well: the different artworks are seen in close-ups, only the last page reveals them.

In À L’Antique (French for “in the antique manner”) Frac Normandie Rouen and Musée des Antiquités Rouen bring together contemporary art and masterpieces from the antiquity. The exhibition is structured in fifteen chapters, going from ancient funeral rituals to archeology as a practice for contemporay artists. The texts are are composed in Gerard Unger’s Alverata, an interpretation of romanesque letterforms. Designed by Jérôme Knebusch. The full booklet can be read here (texts in French).

Since 1991, the cities of Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken and Trier have awarded the Robert Schuman Art Prize. Each city appoints an expert to select four visual artists. Jérome Knebusch, for the 2009 edition, chose the Stockmar typeface, designed by Matthieu Cortat.

The bilingual publication uses the roman cut for French texts and an almost upright italic cut for the German parts. Another more inclined cut is employed for inline emphasis, among other places. The cover features yet another cursive variety with swash caps. Stockmar was originally conceived with three different italics. The revised version available from 205TF is easier to use and has only one italic.

This bilingual book about the works of French artist Sophie Dubosc was designed by Atelier Jérôme Knebusch and is published by Frac Normandie Rouen. Below a brief description about the content.

Featuring new and previous works by Sophie Dubosc, this catalogue gives a complete overview of her aesthetic reflection. Working primarily with three-dimensional forms, sculpture, raw materials, and reflecting on historical issues, the French artist‘s complex practice is covered by two essays, and a full-color photographic documentation section.

The book is typeset entirely in Gitan, which makes for a natural fit for the sculptural theme of the publication. The design is generally kept minimal, clear and coherent and is a pleasure to read. It makes effective use of three type styles: a text weight, a matching italic for emphasis and a bold for headlines, pagination and numbering footnotes. Upon closer inspection the design reveals the great care put into the typographic detailing such as the use of different kinds of figures (lining, tabular lining and old-style figures), proper OpenType superscript figures, appropriate use of small caps, language-specific quote marks, ligatures and more.

Une bréve histoire des lignes [Lines – A Brief History] takes an original view of drawing and lines from 1925 to the present day. It expands the definition of drawing to consider how lines form part of our daily lives and environment. Permanent or ephemeral, physical or metaphorical, lines are everywhere: in writing, in furrows across the landscape, and in the traces our gestures and movements leave behind.

It is freely inspired by the book of the same name by the social anthropologist Tim Ingold. His premise is that “to study both people and things is to study the lines they are made of”. Walking, writing, weaving all belong to this making of lines.

The exhibition continues this exploration and sets off on the trail of the drawn or imagined line, on scales as diverse as a leaf, a wall, the body or the landscape. Its anthropomorphic view of drawing seeks to highlight the spiritual and poetic connections that exist between lines and the world.

Building on the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Lines - A Brief History presents an important body of works from the Department of Drawings. It is joined by loans from the Museum’s collections of photography, visual arts, architecture, film and new media, together with works from the Bibliothèque Kandinsky.

Published by Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2013.
Curators & editorial direction: Hélène Guenin, Christian Briend
Graphic design: Jérôme Knebusch
Typeface: Instant
Printed by Deckers Snoeck, Antwerpen

More info: centrepompidou-metz.fr